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Comment by crowf | Hacker News Reader

It's also probably because we know more about how to treat people with the virus. At first ventilators was the go-to plan for people with difficulty breathing, until it was shown that ventilators were either not very useful or even detrimental. At first we didn't realize quite how bad it was for the elderly. The reason that Sweden had so many deaths at first and now virtually none is because there were breakouts in nursing homes at the beginning. Similarly in the US some states (eg. New York, New Jersey) required nursing homes to admit people who have been tested positive for the virus. Now the leaders of those states realize how bad that is and are better protecting the elderly.

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I recommend reading the latest COVID-19 care protocol from Eastern Virginia Medical School. It has been updated several times and contains details on clinical best practice.

https://www.evms.edu/covid-19/covid_care_for_clinicians/#d.e...

Thanks, here's their summary for prevention:

■ Vitamin C 500 mg BID and Quercetin 250-500 mg BID

■ Zinc 75-100 mg/day

■ Melatonin (slow release): Begin with 0.3mg and increase as tolerated to 2 mg at night

■ Vitamin D3 1000-4000 u/day

■ Optional: Famotidine 20-40mg/day

There is still no treatment. THe people I know who were positive literally received absolutely no medication and were told to just stay home for 14 days despite having a fever and cough. They don't even consider it worthy of any medication or treatment in the U.S. unless you already are obese, diabetic, or have asthma. I think the actual reason we see cases and not deaths is just more testing is happening. At the start they wouldn't even test you if you had a fever and cough unless you knew someone who also had tested positive. Which meant basically it was impossible to get a test because other sick people had the same problem. I have also heard that there is a significant amount of false positives because they rushed most of these testing processes in order to meet demand. I believe it was news that like people had swabbed pieces of fruit like a papaya or something and sent it in and received a positive test still. It is right that most sick or susceptible people are better protecting themselves as well, as they should.

There's a difference between "didn't need treatment/medication" and "no treatment available". A fever/cough don't require prescriptions or a hospital visit, the same as a flu. If things get significantly worse it does, same as a flu (just more likely to happen than with the flu).

It's also important to note treatment isn't the same thing as a cure. Treatment is any medical care for the illness (i.e. things that help keep you alive through it) not just things that make the illness go away (bit of a rectangle/square thing).

One of the sane voices I hear during this pandemic is from Dr Normal Swan, a physician and health journalist here in Oz. He speaks everyday on Coronacast[0]. According to him, one of the reasons is also Dexamethadone which has been proven to reduce mortality by ~20%.

tl;dr of what I've heard on various episodes

- "Standard care" practices have changed

- Dexamethadone

- Lot more of the younger population being infected who have typically been known not to die of the virus (relative to older folks)

- More testing which increases the denominator of CFR

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/

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